Professor Buffy, Ph.D: Vampire-Slaying in the Real World

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Journalism is weird.

Check out this HuffPo article about medieval folks’ belief in vampires:

An archaeological dig near Venice has unearthed the 16th-century remains of a woman with a brick stuck between her jaws— evidence, experts say, that she was believed to be a vampire. The unusual burial is thought to be the result of an ancient vampire-slaying ritual. It suggests the legend of the mythical bloodsucking creatures was tied to medieval ignorance of how diseases spread and what happens to bodies after death, experts said…The well-preserved skeleton was found in 2006 on the Lazzaretto Nuovo island, north of the lagoon city, amid other corpses buried in a mass grave during an epidemic of plague that hit Venice in 1576.”

How weird that the desecrated skeleton blamed for the worst of society’s ills was female. Not. But I digress.

Wouldn’t you know that Friday, as I luxuriated in the New Yorker I innocently came upon this: “In The Blood: Why Do Vampires Still Thrill?”

Ok. I smell a conspiracy, which is about as unusual as me smelling coffee or my stupid cat’s litter box. Or, like, oxygen.

I’m a humorless feminist and all, but given the planet’s fascination with vampires, why are the victims female while the cultural vampire sex symbols are male?

People, if we’re gonna do the time, can’t we at least do the crime?

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In "It's Not a Crisis. This Is the New Normal," we explain, as matter-of-factly as we can, what exactly our finances look like, how brutal it is to sustain quality journalism right now, what makes Mother Jones different than most of the news out there, and why support from readers is the only thing that keeps us going. Despite the challenges, we're optimistic we can increase the share of online readers who decide to donate—starting with hitting an ambitious $300,000 goal in just three weeks to make sure we can finish our fiscal year break-even in the coming months.

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